by Obama Barack
Our pollster, Paul Harstad, went through the numbers and found me already among the first tier of candidates. We discussed the primary and caucus calendar, understanding that for an upstart campaign like mine, everything would depend on winning the early states, especially Iowa. We ran through what a realistic budget might look like, and how we’d go about raising the hundreds of millions of dollars it would take just to win the Democratic nomination. Pete and Alyssa presented plans for juggling my Senate duties with campaign travel. Axelrod wrote a memo outlining the themes of a potential campaign, and how—given voters’ utter contempt for Washington—my message of change could compensate for my obvious lack of experience.
Despite how little time they’d had, everyone had carried out their assignments with thoroughness and care. I was especially impressed by David Plouffe. In his late thirties, slight and intense, with sharp features and a crisp yet informal manner, he had dropped out of college to work on a series of Democratic campaigns and also ran the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee before joining Axelrod’s consulting firm. I sat listening one day as he mapped out how we might power a grassroots state-by-state organizing effort using both our volunteer base and the internet, and later I told Pete that if we did this, Plouffe seemed like the clear choice for campaign manager.
“He’s excellent,” Pete said. “It might take some convincing, though. He’s got a young family.”
This was one of the more striking things about our discussions that month: The entire team displayed an ambivalence that matched my own. It wasn’t just that my candidacy remained a long shot; both Plouffe and Axelrod were blunt in saying that for me to beat Hillary Clinton, a “national brand,” we would have to pitch close to a perfect game. No, what gave them more pause was the fact that, unlike me, they had seen presidential campaigns up close. They knew all too well the grueling nature of the enterprise. They understood the toll it would take not just on me and my family but on them and their families as well.
We’d be on the road constantly. The press would be merciless in its scrutiny—“a nonstop colonoscopy” I believe Gibbs called it. I’d see very little of Michelle or the kids for a year at least—two years if we were lucky enough to win the primary.
“I’ll be honest, Barack,” Axe told me after one meeting. “The process can be exhilarating, but it’s mostly misery. It’s like a stress test, an EKG on the soul. And for all your talent, I don’t know how you’ll respond. Neither do you. The whole thing is so crazy, so undignified and brutal, that you have to be a little pathological to do what it takes to win. And I just don’t know if you’ve got that hunger in you. I don’t think you’ll be unhappy if you never become president.”
“That’s true,” I said.
“I know it is,” Axe said. “And as a person, that’s a strength. But for a candidate, it’s a weakness. You may be a little too normal, too well-adjusted, to run for president. And though the political consultant in me thinks it would be a thrill to see you do this, the part of me that’s your friend kind of hopes you don’t.”
Michelle, meanwhile, was also sorting out her feelings. She listened quietly during meetings, occasionally asking questions about the campaign calendar, what would be expected of her, and what it might mean for the girls. Gradually her resistance to the idea of me running had subsided. Perhaps it helped to hear the unvarnished truth of what a campaign entailed, her worst fears rendered concrete and specific and therefore more manageable. Maybe it was the conversations she’d had with Valerie and Marty, two of our most loyal friends, people whose judgment she implicitly trusted. Or the nudge she got from her brother, Craig—someone who had pursued his own unlikely dreams, first to play professional basketball and later to become a coach, even though it meant giving up a lucrative career in banking.
“She’s just scared,” he had told me over a beer one afternoon. He’d gone on to describe how Michelle and her mother used to watch his high school basketball games, but if the score got even a little close, they’d leave and go wait in the tunnel, the two of them too tense to stay in their seats. “They didn’t want to see me lose,” Craig said. “They didn’t want to see me hurt or disappointed. I had to explain that it’s part of competition.” He was in favor of me taking my shot at the presidency and said he planned to talk it over with his sister. “I want her to see the bigger picture,” he said. “The chance to compete at this level isn’t something you can pass up.”
One day in December, just ahead of our holiday trip to Hawaii, our team held what was to be the final meeting before I decided whether to move forward or not. Michelle patiently endured an hour-long discussion on staffing and the logistics of a potential announcement before cutting in with an essential question.
“You’ve said there are a lot of other Democrats who are capable of winning an election and being president. You’ve told me the only reason for you to run is if you could provide something that the others can’t. Otherwise it’s not worth it. Right?”
I nodded.
“So my question is why you, Barack? Why do you need to be president?”
We looked at each other across the table. For a moment, it was as if we were alone in the room. My mind flipped back to the moment seventeen years earlier when we first met, me arriving late to her office, a little damp from the rain, Michelle rising up from her desk, so lovely and self-possessed in a lawyerly blouse and skirt, and the easy banter that followed. I had seen in those round, dark eyes of hers a vulnerability that I knew she rarely let show. I knew even then that she was special, that I would need to know her, that this was a woman I could love. How lucky I had been, I thought.
“Barack?”
I shook myself out of the reverie. “Right,” I said. “Why me?” I mentioned several of the reasons we’d talked about before. That I might be able to spark a new kind of politics, or get a new generation to participate, or bridge the divisions in the country better than other candidates could.
“But who knows?” I said, looking around the table. “There’s no guarantee we can pull it off. Here’s one thing I know for sure, though. I know that the day I raise my right hand and take the oath to be president of the United States, the world will start looking at America differently. I know that kids all around this country—Black kids, Hispanic kids, kids who don’t fit in—they’ll see themselves differently, too, their horizons lifted, their possibilities expanded. And that alone…that would be worth it.”
The room was quiet. Marty smiled. Valerie was tearing up. I could see different members of the team conjuring it in their minds, the swearing in of the first African American president of the United States.
Michelle stared at me for what felt like an eternity. “Well, honey,” she said finally, “that was a pretty good answer.”
Everyone laughed, and the meeting moved on to other business. In years to come, those who’d been in the room would sometimes make reference to that meeting, understanding that my answer to Michelle’s question had been an impromptu articulation of a shared faith, the thing that had launched us all on what would be a long, rough, and improbable journey. They would remember it when they saw a little boy touch my hair in the Oval Office, or when a teacher reported that the kids in her inner-city class had started studying harder after I was elected.
And it’s true: In answering Michelle’s question, I was anticipating the ways in which I hoped that even a credible campaign might shake loose some vestiges of America’s racial past. But privately I knew that getting there also meant something more personal.
If we won, I thought, it would mean that my U.S. Senate campaign hadn’t just been dumb luck.
If we won, it would mean that what had led me into politics wasn’t just a pipe dream, that the America I believed in was possible, that the democracy I believed in was within reach.
If we won, it would mean that I wasn’t alone in believing that the world didn’t have to be
a cold, unforgiving place, where the strong preyed on the weak and we inevitably fell back into clans and tribes, lashing out against the unknown and huddling against the darkness.
If these beliefs were made manifest, then my own life made sense, and I could then pass on that promise, that version of the world, to my children.
I had made a bet a long time ago, and this was the point of reckoning. I was about to step over some invisible line, one that would inexorably change my life, in ways I couldn’t yet imagine and in ways I might not like. But to stop now, to turn back now, to lose my nerve now—that was unacceptable.
I had to see how this whole thing played out.
PART TWO
YES WE CAN
CHAPTER 5
ON A BRIGHT FEBRUARY MORNING in 2007, I stood on a stage before the Old State Capitol in Springfield—the same spot where Abe Lincoln had delivered his “House Divided” speech while serving in the Illinois state legislature—and announced my candidacy for president. With temperatures in the low teens, we’d been worried that the cold might scare people off, but by the time I stepped up to the microphone, more than fifteen thousand people had gathered in the plaza and adjoining streets, all of them in a festive mood, bundled in parkas, scarves, ski caps, and earmuffs, many of them hoisting handmade or campaign-provided OBAMA signs, their collective breath hovering like patches of clouds.
My speech, carried live on cable TV, captured our campaign’s big themes—the need for fundamental change; the need to tackle long-term problems like healthcare and climate change; the need to move past the tired Washington partisan divide; the need for an engaged and active citizenry. Michelle and the girls joined me onstage to wave at the roaring crowd when I was finished, the massive American flags hanging across nearby buildings making for a spectacular backdrop.
From there, my team and I flew to Iowa, where in eleven months the nation’s first contest for the nomination would take place, and where we were counting on an early victory to catapult us past more seasoned opponents. At a series of town hall meetings, we were once again greeted by thousands of supporters and curiosity seekers. Backstage at an event in Cedar Rapids, I overheard a veteran Iowa political operative explain to one of the fifty or so national reporters who were following us that “this is not normal.”
Looking at the footage from that day, it’s hard not to get swept up in the nostalgia that still holds sway over my former staff and supporters—the feeling that we were kick-starting a magical ride; that over the course of two years we would catch lightning in a bottle and tap into something essential and true about America. But while the crowds, the excitement, the media attention of that day, all foreshadowed my viability in the race, I have to remind myself that nothing felt easy or predestined at the time, that again and again it felt as if our campaign would go entirely off the rails, and that, at the outset, it seemed not just to me but to many who were paying attention that I wasn’t a particularly good candidate.
In many ways, my problems were a direct outgrowth of the buzz we’d generated, and the expectations that came with it. As Axe explained, most presidential campaigns by necessity start small—“Off-Broadway,” he called it; small crowds, small venues, covered by local networks and small papers, where the candidate and his or her team could test lines, smooth out kinks, commit a pratfall, or work through a bout of stage fright without attracting much notice. We didn’t have that luxury. From day one, it felt like the middle of Times Square, and under the glare of the spotlight my inexperience showed.
My staff’s biggest fear was that I’d make a “gaffe,” the expression used by the press to describe any maladroit phrase by the candidate that reveals ignorance, carelessness, fuzzy thinking, insensitivity, malice, boorishness, falsehood, or hypocrisy—or is simply deemed to veer sufficiently far from conventional wisdom to make said candidate vulnerable to attack. By this definition, most humans will commit five to ten gaffes a day, each of us counting on the forbearance and goodwill of our family, co-workers, and friends to fill in the blanks, catch our drift, and generally assume the best rather than the worst in us.
As a result, my initial instincts were to dismiss some of my team’s warnings. On our way to our final stop in Iowa on announcement day, for example, Axe glanced up from his briefing book.
“You know,” he said, “the town we’re going to, it’s pronounced ‘Waterloo.’ ”
“Right,” I said. “Waterloo.”
Axe shook his head. “No, it’s Water-loo. Not Water-loo.”
“Do that for me again.”
“Water-loo,” Axe said, his lips pursing just so.
“One more time.”
Axe frowned. “Okay, Barack…this is serious.”
It didn’t take long, though, to appreciate that the minute you announced your candidacy for president, the normal rules of speech no longer applied; that microphones were everywhere, and every word coming out of your mouth was recorded, amplified, scrutinized, and dissected. At the town hall in Ames, Iowa, on that first post-announcement tour, I was explaining my opposition to the war in Iraq when I got sloppy and said that the Bush administration’s poorly-thought-out decision had resulted in more than three thousand of our young troops’ lives being “wasted.” The second I uttered the word, I regretted it. I’d always been careful to distinguish between my views on the war and my appreciation for the sacrifices of our troops and their families. Only a few press outlets picked up my blunder, and a quick mea culpa tamped down any controversy. But it was a reminder that words carried a different weight than before, and as I imagined how my carelessness might impact a family still grieving over the loss of a loved one, my heart sank.
By nature I’m a deliberate speaker, which, by the standards of presidential candidates, helped keep my gaffe quotient relatively low. But my care with words raised another issue on the campaign trail: I was just plain wordy, and that was a problem. When asked a question, I tended to offer circuitous and ponderous answers, my mind instinctively breaking up every issue into a pile of components and subcomponents. If every argument had two sides, I usually came up with four. If there was an exception to some statement I just made, I wouldn’t just point it out; I’d provide footnotes. “You’re burying the lede!” Axe would practically shout after listening to me drone on and on and on. For a day or two I’d obediently focus on brevity, only to suddenly find myself unable to resist a ten-minute explanation of the nuances of trade policy or the pace of Arctic melting.
“What d’ya think?” I’d say, pleased with my thoroughness as I walked offstage.
“You got an A on the quiz,” Axe would reply. “No votes, though.”
These were issues I could fix with time. Of greater concern, as we rolled into the spring, was the fact that I was grumpy. One reason for that, I realize now, was the toll of a two-year Senate campaign, a year of town halls as a senator, and months of travel on behalf of other candidates. Once the adrenaline of the announcement wore off, the sheer magnitude of the grind now before me struck with full force.
And it was a grind. When not in Washington for Senate business, I soon found myself in Iowa or one of the other early states, putting in sixteen-hour days, six and a half days a week—sleeping in a Hampton Inn or a Holiday Inn or an AmericInn or a Super 8. I’d wake up after five or six hours and try to squeeze in a workout at whatever facility we could find (the old treadmill in the back of a tanning salon was memorable), before packing up my clothes and gulping down a haphazard breakfast; before hopping into a van and making fundraising calls on the way to the first town hall meeting of the day; before interviews with the local paper or news station, several meet-and-greets with local party leaders, a bathroom stop, and maybe a swing by a local eatery to shake hands; before hopping back in the van to dial for more dollars. I’d repeat this three or four times, with a cold sandwich or a salad wedged in there somewhere, before finally staggering into another motel aro
und nine p.m., trying to catch Michelle and the girls by phone before they went to bed, before reading the next day’s briefing materials, the binder gradually slipping out of my hands as exhaustion knocked me out.
And that’s not even counting the flights to New York or L.A. or Chicago or Dallas for fundraisers. It was a life of not glamour but monotony, and the prospect of eighteen continuous months of it quickly wore down my spirit. I’d staked my claim in the presidential race, involved a big team of people, begged strangers for money, and propagated a vision I believed in. But I missed my wife. I missed my kids. I missed my bed, a consistent shower, sitting at a proper table for a proper meal. I missed not having to say the exact same thing the exact same way five or six or seven times a day.
Fortunately, along with Gibbs (who had the constitution, experience, and general orneriness to keep me focused while on the road), I had two other companions to help me push through my initial funk.
The first was Marvin Nicholson, a half Canadian with an easy charm and unflappable demeanor. In his mid-thirties and a towering six foot eight, Marvin had held a variety of jobs, from golf caddy to bartender at a strip club, before landing work as John Kerry’s body man four years earlier. It’s a strange role, the body man: a personal assistant and jack-of-all-trades responsible for making sure that the candidate has everything he or she needs to function, whether a favorite snack or a couple of Advil, an umbrella when it’s wet or a scarf when it’s cold, or the name of the county chairman who’s striding your way for a handshake. Marvin operated with such skill and finesse, he’d become something of a cult figure in political circles, which had led us to hire him as our trip director, working with Alyssa and the advance team to coordinate travel, make sure I had the appropriate materials, and keep me at least close to on schedule.
Then there was Reggie Love. Raised in North Carolina, the son of middle-class Black parents, six foot four and powerfully built, Reggie had starred in both basketball and football at Duke University before Pete Rouse hired him as an assistant in my Senate office. (An aside: People often express surprise at how tall I am, a bit over six foot one, something I attribute in part to years of being dwarfed by Reggie and Marvin in photographs.) Under Marvin’s tutelage, twenty-five-year-old Reggie took over as body man, and though he had a rough go of it at first—somehow managing to forget my briefcase in Miami and my suit jacket in New Hampshire during the same week—his serious work ethic and goofy good humor quickly made him a favorite of everyone on the campaign.
